Day Three, Cork!

We woke up super early (I wasn't kidding when I said every day was early to rise) and headed out to Heuston to catch a train out to Cork. Luckily for us our Eurorail passes got us on the train for free (otherwise it was like a 40 euro trip) and we took a nice train ride 3 hours southwest of Dublin to the city of Cork. What was our mission? Eloquence. After we took the train ride to Cork, we hopped off, and grabbed a bus out to Blarney Castle. I have to throw in a comment that it was the most miserable bus ride I've ever had. It was a relatively cool (not cold, but cool) day outside and the driver had the heat on as absolutely high as it would go. The fumes from the bus, mixed with the heat caused a nice grouchy Sean. But alas we had made it to Blarney, away from the tourism...or so we thought. As long as I've been living in Europe, I've learned a bit why people don't like Americans. The ones we saw in Blarney came off a bit, well dumb and loud. To put a cherry on top, the ones we saw were nice and over weight and were completely out of breath climbing a few stairs. I love America, but damn haha. After touring around the Blarney Castle we made it to the top where the main tourist attraction was, the Blarney Stone. I read on one of the signs that in the 'States they made an exact replica of the Blarney Castle. The US offered 1,000,000 dollars to let us borrow the Blarney Stone and they declined. They aren't sellouts. Gotta visit the Blarney for the real deal yall. Some of my Blarney predecessors happen to be the great English Winston Churchill. You have to lay down, and basically get flipped upside down while leaning almost out of the castle to kiss the blarney stone. It is supposed to give you the gift of eloquence. I don't know what that means but I'm pretty excited. Afterwards we walked around the Blarney Castle for a while and headed into the city of Cork. I quickly realized that I was starving. Not hungry, starving. We didn't have our breakfast of Irish champions and we had skipped lunch. I wanted one thing, McDonalds. I don't know why but I wanted it bad. As soon as I saw the golden arches I literally ran towards it. I stepped up to the plate and promptly ordered 5 (yes 5) double cheeseburgers. Let me recap for you. Each one was 2 euro. I spent 10 euro total. Lets convert to dollars. I spent approximately 15 American on double cheeseburgers because I was so hungry. It took me maybe 20 minutes to eat 5 cheeseburgers and I was on my merry way to tour Cork once again. We toured the city for a while longer (nothing too crazy there) and got on the train home where we slept, shot the breeze and laughed some. Once we got back to Heuston station we decided we wanted to go hang out with the locals away from the touristy area our last night in Dublin. We went to a local place and was promptly befriended by a very large Irishman bus driver named paddy. As soon as he heard that we were from the states his eyes lit up and he promptly told us how much he loved America. New York, Florida and California is where everyone thinks we're from and Paddy (the Irishman) had two favorite cities: Orlando and New York. He said "I'm still saving up all me pennies so I can get back to Orlando and New York." That place is Brilliant. Brilliant. He couldn't quit saying Brilliant but he was a genuine kind hearted person. We only stopped in for one Guiness before the last train to Park West but Paddy who we could tell wasn't financially endowed wanted to order all of us another beer. We had to leave soon and we had to decline but were genuinely blown away by the Irish. He did poke fun of us a bit for us "You came to Ireland, and you're turning down beer? You must be crazy" but we were all really truly grateful for their hospitality. We headed out of the pub and back to Park West for a bittersweet goodbye. We had to wake up the next morning at 5, so it was pretty much goodbye.

Pics. Naturally.